


They Pulled Him from the Water and He Didn't Say a Word

by octonaut



Category: TwitchRP
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Speech Disorders, Stuttering, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 11:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20114260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octonaut/pseuds/octonaut
Summary: remember that time jerry was in a coma, wouldn't it be fucked up if that had like lasting consequences or something haha





	They Pulled Him from the Water and He Didn't Say a Word

Jerry doesn’t talk anymore.

Which isn’t to say he can’t.

But he won’t.

Ken is certain it started after the incident in the lake. He wasn’t there (curses himself every day for it, for not being there) so he doesn’t know exactly what went down, but whatever did, it changed him. Changed Jerry.

He spoke at first, oh sure, he spoke plenty. Fingle in the driver’s seat, Ken and Dan with him in the car—Jerry had plenty to say when they first rolled up. But it was broken. Ken recognized the voice, the faint ghost of charisma behind it, but he didn’t recognize the tone and its odd lilt. In turn, Jerry barely recognized their faces. During this initial meeting, it had been Ken who could barely say a word.

Oh, how quickly that changed.

Jerry joined their heists again and during those quiet moments before the shit really hit the fan, Ken lying in wait on the roof with Jerry at his side, things felt normal. They joked back and forth, they nudged each other, they laughed. How could it ever be any different? How could anything ever hurt them up here, what felt like miles above the ground, in the damn clouds, practically—a juggernaut at his side, hulking and massive and—up here?—all his. Together, like they always have been. Part of a team.

During that first robbery, Ken wonders what it was that did it. Was it the lights from the police cruisers, blue and red flashes in the dark thrown across asphalt and reflected in the windows? Was it the noise, the shouting—Dan shrieking out the door down below, tires screaming as Fingle pulled up to the curb, the cops threatening to taze? Whatever it was, it was time for the two of them to get the hell off that roof, to dodge bullets and dive into the car. Jerry knew it. He turned to Ken, big and familiar and _ safe_, a monolith of a man that no one could ever take down, and he stopped dead. Couldn’t see it behind the mask but Ken knew that his mouth was working silently, trying to form words it couldn’t think of.

Ken looked into his eyes then and knew without a doubt that Jerry couldn’t remember his name.

Jerry hadn’t said much during the ensuing drive. Didn’t look at Ken much either, only when he thought Ken wasn’t looking, but Ken was. He found it difficult to look at anything else. That night in the car, he saw a look in Jerry’s eyes that was foreign then, but familiar now. It was frustration, and shame. Like a second mask under his first.

But that wasn’t when he stopped talking for good. No, that came later, after more robberies and further brawls and long nights where Jerry couldn’t sleep, where Ken braved the night with him. He spoke fine when it was just the two of them, low and hushed like every word was some great secret.

But Jerry isn’t a quiet man. He’s a talker (was a talker), always with something to say. So the argument with Dan started out perfectly normal—so normal, in fact, that at first, Ken had been sure they were just joking around. Then Dan’s tone had turned mocking, and Jerry’s voice took on a shrill edge, and Ken started listening to what they were actually saying.

“It’s not my fault,” Jerry snapped.

“It kind of is, if you think about it,” Dan said. Casually, but his voice was tight and high-strung like it gets when he’s upset. “Coulda just shot those cops, shot ‘em instead of running into the water. Swimming. Coulda killed ‘em.”

“You think I didn’t t-try?”

That stutter, that stumble, had made Ken frown where he lounged on the couch.

“Coulda tried harder is all I’m saying, I’m just saying, man,” Dan said, hands raised. “Thought you were supposed to be good at shooting, is all.”

“I took one of them out,” Jerry said. “I—”

“Just one, Jerry? Just one?”

“I couldn’t see—see the other one.” At this point, Ken sat up and turned to find Jerry standing stock still, gripping the edge of the table so hard that his arms shook. “I was in the wuh-water and Randy—c-called me, and—”

He just kept going, tried so hard, like each syllable was a round he had to load by hand into some useless old gun. He kept going until the silences dragged on, until they made him tremble like he was about to burst, until Dan ran out of patience.

“Jesus, Jerry, spit it out!”

Jerry had hammered his fist down on the table, upsetting everything on it. That was when Ken decided he needed to intervene.

“Just drop it, you fuckin’ meathead,” he’d said, but Dan hadn’t scurried off until Ken physically came for him.

Of course, he didn’t give chase. He stayed behind with Jerry, who still had one hand gripping the edge of the table, his other hand like a clamp across the part of his mask where his mouth should be.

“Jer,” Ken said, and he hates how cautious he’d been, hates how he’d felt like he was approaching an unfamiliar animal rather than Jerry. _ His _ Jerry. “You okay?”

In the silence, Jerry shook his head.

* * *

So Jerry doesn’t talk anymore. Won’t. Whatever. He takes his orders with a nod or a thumbs up, stalks behind his prey without warning them, without trading banter. Never before has he felt so unknowable, like there’s nothing behind that blank mask of his. Like the mask is his face.

But Ken refuses to forget that the mask is a mask, and that there’s more behind it. There’s a brain ticking away back there—not the same brain Ken once knew, but it’s in Jerry’s head, thinking Jerry’s thoughts, and Ken is thirsty to pick it all the same.

It’s not necessarily true that Jerry never speaks anymore. He does, sometimes, but only in the dark. Only when it’s just him and Ken, the two of them pressed into each other’s sides as they try to convince themselves they can feel each other through the body armor. A long arm loped around Jerry’s shoulders, nearly-comfortable fingers dancing on Ken’s waist. Secluded, but not silent.

Here in the dark they speak to each other in whispers, because every word has become a secret.


End file.
